1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to aircraft and other vehicles and, in particular, to processing information onboard an aircraft or other vehicle. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method and apparatus for processing and reporting operational information on an aircraft or other vehicle by a computer program running on the aircraft or other vehicle and changing the processing and reporting of information onboard the aircraft or other vehicle without changing the computer program.
2. Background
Modern aircraft may comprise many systems. Improper operation of one or more aircraft systems may affect operational performance of an aircraft in undesired ways. For example, improper operation of systems on a commercial passenger aircraft may result in a flight delay, cancellation, air turn back, diversion, or other undesirable flight schedule interruption. Such a schedule interruption may inconvenience customers and cost an airline economically, depending on the aircraft and the nature of the interruption. For military aircraft, improper operation of aircraft systems may reduce mission readiness, result in a mission being aborted, or reduce operational readiness in another undesired way.
Schedule interruptions and other undesired effects on operational readiness may be reduced or eliminated by effective diagnostics and prognostics for aircraft systems. For example, by identifying and predicting improper operation of an aircraft system before it occurs, appropriate preventative or other action may be taken to reduce or eliminate undesired effects on aircraft operations. Providing such diagnostics and prognostics for aircraft systems may be a part of aircraft health management.
The goal of aircraft health management may be to improve the operational performance of an aircraft by turning available aircraft data into useful actionable information. For example, without limitation, an aircraft health management system may be configured to monitor, collect, and analyze available aircraft data to enable engineering and maintenance personnel to make timely, economic, and repeatable maintenance decisions to help improve aircraft operation.
Aircraft health management may be performed using operational information generated by or on an aircraft when the aircraft is in flight. For example, such operational information may include data obtained via direct or indirect connections to a number of data busses on the aircraft. Once acquired, the operational information from an aircraft in flight may be translated, filtered, monitored, and published before being analyzed for aircraft health management.
Current systems and methods for aircraft health management may be improved. For example, it may be desirable to improve the flexibility of current aircraft health management systems so that such systems may be more quickly adapted to take advantage of new sources of aircraft operational information and new ideas about how to use aircraft operational information to improve aircraft health management. Alternatively, or in addition, it may be desirable to improve the efficiency of current aircraft health management systems to provide the benefits of improved aircraft operation more quickly and reliably and at less cost.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to have a method and apparatus that take into account one or more of the issues discussed above, as well as possibly other issues.